|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| My Beta Impressions by McFeely |
Beta: The Burning Review
McFeely
I’ve been playing games for years, and MMORPGs for 3years or more. While I like to refer to myself as a casual gamer it really falls into the casual hardcore gamer. When I get time I’ll play for hours on end and then some days I’ll sit around and not log in at all. I’ve beta tested quite a few games in the last few years none of which I’ve been impressed with. So after playing Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, and several other games, I know what beta is like. The difference is I forgot I was playing WoW, and that doesn’t mean that I got a bout Alzheimers, just means that it’s done well. You enter the game much like you did before; obviously they’ve changed the look a bit to fit with the expansion. One thing that caught me off guard, and I’m not sure if the regular game checks or not, but it scans quickly for running Trojans. When you start out with a new character you have two additional races to choose from.
The Draenei are the interesting looking large creatures with hooves and bluish skin. Classes include the usual warrior, mage, paladin, priest, and hunter. Draenei can also be shamans, which is a plus for those of us that enjoy the class but have more friends on the alliance side or play pvp servers and can’t have a horde character on the same server. The Draenei start in a grouping of islands off the northeastern coast of Kalimdor, near Darkshore. You start in a crash site where the Draenei are recovering from the crash as well as trying to restore the area where they landed after in becoming contaminated from the ships power crystals. Quests include healing survivors, restoring plant and animal life, and even taking out a camp of pretentious Blood elves.
The Blood Elves, who can easily be explained as being any character Roger Rees ever played in a movie, are a power hungry group of elves that feed on the arcane. The scourge invaded and wiped out about 90% of the snotty little elves population. One would think having an army of undead coming in, beating the snot out of you, and fouling up your precious sunwell would humble most creatures…. but not the Blood Elves. Blood Elf classes are your standard Mage, priest, warlock casting classes with some rogue and hunter tossed in for fun. Blood Elves have also tapped the paladin, the class that any self respecting, religious zealot slash power monger race, couldn’t do without. Your starting quests have you soaking up mana from nearby creatures and pretty much showing off your magical prowess.
As far as betas go you normally come into them expecting bugs, glitches, crashes and a countless number of other things which can, and usually do go wrong. Strangely enough you don’t get that with The Burning Crusade. Sure you have some bugs and glitches, but they aren’t game stopping holy terrors as they are in other betas. Blizzard has once again shown the industry how it’s done. I expect that the expansion will break all sorts of new records in the industry.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
